


Black Swan

by perifairy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Minor Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2018-08-22
Packaged: 2019-07-01 02:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15764337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perifairy/pseuds/perifairy
Summary: “Nat, will you have this last dance with me?”





	Black Swan

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daylightspeaks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daylightspeaks/gifts), [marvelxtina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marvelxtina/gifts), [MalFairchild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalFairchild/gifts).



> “Nat, will you have this last dance with me?”
> 
> She gracefully accepts, being a dancer and all. 
> 
> (I love this ship with all my heart. To Tiffany, it'll never be as great as your recs, but I hope you'll find it decent.)

**(1)**

She no longer remembers the last time she danced.

But as her feet leads her to an empty room - lost in the hallways, smoke and mirrors - she remembers it like it was yesterday.

So she dances.

A light twirl at first, as if she is Natalia all over again. She puts the pressure on her toes, balances herself and she finds her rhythm. The room blurs and she’s spinning. There’s no beat but she lets the familiarity lead her and her thoughts away.

If she tries hard enough, the cacophony of war in her ears dulls until the only sound she can hear is her breathing.

She closes her eyes and begins again.

 

Steve has never seen her dance. But for the first time in days,  this woman dancing with effortless grace, he thinks he _sees_ her. He _finally_ sees her. The Natasha he knows, _this_ Natasha somehow he knows, though he has never seen her dance. 

Not the ghost of a hollow soul walking with him in his own hollowness.

He stands there, watching, transfixed because - and he takes a deep breath - he sees _life_.

He feels life again.

And the crack of the air sizzles, and then Natasha knows someone is watching - because she is Black Widow and it’s second nature, like watching over your shoulder - she _feels_ him rather than sees him and she feels life again. 

There’s a reason why she has been keeping her distance. The spoils of war has made them all weary. And she knows, _God she knows_ , that he only has to look her in the eye to break her apart.

 _Sam. Wanda. Bucky. T’challa._  

Too many losses. Him. Almost. Too many.

Compartmentalize. It has always been better to keep it all in. Boxes and boxes and more boxes, never to be opened.

But she feels him rather than sees him, and Natasha knows she can’t run away from him forever. Life seeps through her, like she is coming up for air, as he comes closer.

 

Another twirl, and another; she tries to catch her breath. She almost wishes she’s forgotten how it feels to be alive - if only, _if only_ not to remember they are all gone, and - 

Steve catches her. And he is still here.

Gracious in his strength though she’s no delicate thing, graceful in her fall as she leans right into him.

 “Nat.”

 “Steve.”

 She dares to open her eyes and she sees it all in his.

 So she cries.

 

A fleeting memory of the two of them passes her mind - they were standing not too far from each other, but not close enough to bear the grip of loss.

  _"Why are you here?”_

 She knows he needs her too.

 “I’m still here.”

  _“I didn’t want you to be alone.”_

 “I know.”

 

It hurts to feel alive in the aftermath. But they are and they need to keep on living.

 

* * *

The ones left charted their own search. Cover more ground, watch for any clues left behind. New York. SHIELD wherever they may be now. Pepper. Tony has also gone. Berlin. Vienna.

 They never gave up hope.

Days passed, and then months, then the months turned into a year. Steve went everywhere he could think of, Natasha coming along with him. Washington. Sokovia. Russia. They are going everywhere but nowhere. The realization hits Natasha as she watches from across the street in the bar they were sitting in, one cold night in a narrow alley in Madrid. It’s like being on the run all over again, only being hunted by ghosts.

“Ready?”

She nods. Steve holds the door open for her as she steps out and they plunge into companionable silence, walking side by side.

Giving up has never been a choice. But Natasha knows they have to pull themselves up and carry on. That’s what they - Sam, Bucky, Wanda, all their friends - would want them to do.

Live the life they never had. Perhaps, even what that small broken voice says at the back of her mind.

_Live the life they never will._

They keep their silence. Steve keeps looking ahead, never once sparing her a glance. The night grows with the faint sounds of singing and laughter from afar. She steps into him closer, sharing the warmth, with only the sounds of their boots clinking on the pavement.

He doesn’t stop still as he reaches for her hand, and if Natasha had felt her skin prickle at the touch, she gives nothing away. She doesn’t stop, she doesn’t pull away and she doesn’t _ask_. 

They turn around the corner to a deserted parking lot where the quinjet is. She knows without him saying - that it is a dead end, it’s _another_ dead end and they have to move on. 

She struggles with the weight of grief rushing through her like the chill of the breeze.

Only then when he is standing right in front of her that she realizes they had stopped. He might have stopped, and she followed or she might have and he did. In sync, like a well-oiled machine working together even in their emptiness.

“I can’t lose you too.”

 His eyes are glazed and misty and she keeps the memory locked close in her heart. There are no words - no words could possibly describe if, _if_ she lost him, _if_ \- so she nods, stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the lips. 

Softly, surely - to remind them both of what they have lost, and what they still have.

They walk hand in hand in silence to the jet through another dark night among the many.

It’s a pity the world doesn’t stop for broken hearts.

* * *

**(2)**

When Steve asked her to marry him, her first question was, “Where?”

He gives her a look. “Here.”

Wakanda. But what about that - what is it they say - you cannot find healing where you got hurt? 

“Okay.”

She’s not even surprised it was just that easy.

* * *

That night she thinks of Steve and his slow breathing and every second that passes by without the nightmares coming in to haunt him. Natasha is awake, posed for battle, to fight against seventy years and more of war and loss. The quiet, the lull, his steady presence as she keeps watch - those are the moments she counts the most. 

She thinks of love. Of love that she once knew, with Alexei. Of forbidden fleeting moments with Clint; and on passion and chaos, there was James. If someone asked her when she realized what she feels now, she would probably laugh. Some questions just have no answers to them. 

Maybe it was when the next thing she knew, she was flying off to London because she didn’t want him to be alone. Or maybe - _maybe_ when suddenly the red on her ledger no longer mattered as much, and she was more than willing to smear the blood color on her hands for aiding a fugitive. Perhaps it was when she heard his voice again after she let him go, because he _still_ trusted her. 

What they have - she looks at over at Steve - is a sense of togetherness, and companionship, of non-words and assured glances.

Marriage is a union of souls. Of the need to fill the other, at the expense of emptying oneself.

What they have isn’t love. It’s not _just_ love.

 

They have held each other many countless times in the same bed. Over nightmares, over cramped spaces, over practicality and laying low. Being on the run has fewer luxuries. But for the first time, she reaches over and touches his face as he sleeps.

Raw, vulnerable, unhurried. The deepness in his eyes, the ten o clock shadow on his jaw.

Natasha scoots closer in his arms, in a way she has never done before, and she settles her face in the crook of his neck right against his pulse. He shifts, as he closes her in an embrace and she calms her thoughts to sleep.

She closes her eyes, feeling his weight, having another burden of palpable loss she is not quite sure she can bear to have. 

What they have isn’t just love. 

Love? Love is for children.

* * *

 

 

Her Highness Shuri of Wakanda blesses them in marriage by the lake in a sunset on an ordinary day.

Maybe in another life, she can give him the white picket fences, the all out American dream. For the boy in Brooklyn who have had simple dreams; for the life he never got to live.

_But what they have -_

“It’s the shared experiences,” he says, while holding her hand, a small smile on his face. 

“The life and death ones?”

“Quite literally.”

Natasha shakes her head. Steve holds her face in both his hands, and looks at her steady, memorizing her.

“You are my peace in a lifetime of war.” 

What they have - _we have what we have when we have it._  

And then he kissed his bride.

* * *

Sam would never believe it and he surely will chide them in their denial, but they had never slept together.

 _"I don’t mind getting another room,”_ he had suggested more than once. Natasha has mostly given him a deadpanned look every single time, the joke has gotten old after all, and Steve would only shake his head.

They had never slept together in that sense, but nobody ever said neither of them had _not_ thought about it.

They did. Often.

He shuts the door, her hands still clutched in his. Steve moves closer, engulfing her space with his presence and his strength. It took them both a while to look away from each other’s eyes.

When he pulls her dress down as he trails a kiss on her shoulder, Natasha finds herself holding on to him. Her heart is beating loud against her chest, and she wonders why she feels afraid.

“I got you.” 

He kisses her, hard, overpowering, and she itches at the need to be closer to him. Just closer. Be one with him. 

Steve has told her he loves her, but in not so many words. He is more to the touch - a brush in the arm, a grip in her shoulder. He holds her gently; his hands touching everywhere. He spells his love - _this love_ \- he has for her as he slowly traces the beads down her spine, a kiss ghosting at her lips, his eyes closed as if in prayer. 

Their lovemaking is a dance she learns the first time that night.

* * *

“I know their names.”

 “Who?”

 “Our children.”

Natasha takes a while to answer. Steve imagines her rolling her eyes, or crunching her nose -

“Children.”

Her life have more losses than luxuries. Being on the run have given her less. She sighs - Steve cannot possibly _forget_ her condition - but she indulges him all the same.

His eyes twinkles - and she _knows_ he remembers - as he leans in his side to face her. Then his smile drops and he sighs, content yet wistful. Steve looks up, darting his gaze away. 

“Bucky, Sam, Wanda.”

This time, she turns to look at him, silently questioning. He waits. She takes her time.

“James,” she says quietly. “I like James better.”

He smiles, albeit broken - for the life they cannot have, for the ones that they have lost. Perhaps it is a blessing to know that they can start over, and they have, but there is only so much you can leave behind.

It is a smile nonetheless. 

She accepts it. 

“Okay.”

 

Sam would never believe that this was their first time, Bucky would agree with him and Wanda - maybe Wanda would help pick her a dress. The silence draws them further in, and Natasha wants to be selfish - _please,_ just for today - but she knows they will never forget anyway.

So instead, she opens her arms to the ghosts of the past two years, a tear running along her cheek at the ache. She misses them. They both do. 

“What about Vision?”

She runs away with it. And he, as always, with her.

“Vision Rogers?”

Steve groans into his pillow.

Natasha has never laughed so loud in her life. Steve reaches for her, wiping her tears away. He has been crying too. But the sound of her laughter bounced off on him easily, and he laughs along just the same.

It has always been easy with him.

 

* * *

**(3)**

Five years has been long, but not enough to get up and fight another war. 

Adrenaline rushes through her veins, the intensity so thrilling, no sparring from all those years could ever compare. Black Widow launches into a kick and another one falls down. 

She runs into the next one, bigger this time, and Captain America is by her side at once. They move in sync as if no time has passed since they last fought together.

He throws his shield and it hurls into the air, knocking down ten, and it bounces back in his arms as she lands from her maneuver. 

“You dance the way you fight.”

 She smiles cheekily. “No, I fight the way I dance.”

It must be the sound of adrenaline ringing in her ears, her rhythm never stopping as she moves fast, and faster, locking and killing targets.

 

And then the sound of white noise.

 

She could only watch in silence as the weapon pierced Steve’s body, big enough to leave a hole.

Iron Man shields her from the attack above she never sees coming, as her screams pierce through the sound of bullets and the metal shield falling by her side.

She feels herself falling, and there was no one else to catch her.

_Not anymore._

All she hears is the cacophony of war.

* * *

_The red and blue streaks in his suit was a stark contrast to the blue sky and Natasha’s red hair._

_Where else am I going to get a view like this?_

_Nowhere else, he thinks, for though there’s no ice, it is so cold - so so cold - so cold._

_He never woke up again._

 

* * *

 

**(4)**

For four years they have lived their lives the best they can. 

Then Tony finds his way home.

Hearing the news was overwhelming for Steve and Natasha - there was relief, joy, fear.

All of them - she and Steve, Thor, Bruce, Clint and then Tony - they are together once more. Natasha couldn’t help but think that it _must_ mean something.

Another battle to carry. Another war to win.

Tony has brought home with him information, and some friends, that has revived the hope for their long lost fight. Among those, is the shocking realization that time has passed differently in the planet that he was in. Four years had passed on Earth on the days or weeks they had on Titan.

So he does the first thing a man like Tony Stark will do after missing Earth for that much of a long time: marry Pepper Potts.

 

Natasha downs her wine and catches Steve’s eyes on her across the room. He looks solemn, but he shifts his mood as she walked closer.

“That’s your fourth.”

“Who’s counting?”

 She saunters into the bar, a smirk playing on her lips. “And that’s three and a half to be exact. You gave me a half glass the first time.”

 “Hm.”

 “We never had booze on our wedding. It was kind enough of Tony to invite us so I can piggyback.”

 “After two years.”

 Natasha looks at him slyly, “You know what they say about wine. Only gets finer with age.”

This time, Steve looks at her, obviously impressed. He knows by now Natasha is just as stubborn as he is when she puts her mind into something. He settles for a toast as she relaxes beside him. By now, he knows which battles to pick.

“To three and a half.”

“We’re only married for two years.”

“Oh. Are we toasting to that? I was toasting to the fine wine.”

With one eyebrow raised, Steve only shrugged with a playful smile that mirrored her own earlier, turning to watch the people sway to some slow song on the dance floor. Some things never change.

Natasha turns away from him with a sigh.

“Doesn’t feel like a toast to me with that look on your face.”

If he was caught off-guard, he didn’t show. “What look?”

“The look that says you’re back in 1945.”

He laughs and he disarms her with that charm, boyish and a little shy of feeling embarrassed at being caught. He shakes his head, looks at her in a way that has haunted her almost always.

 _"God, I love you.”_  

“I know.” She looks away, masking her emotions. She knows a lot about ghosts after all. 

“Do you think she’ll mind?” Natasha asks after a while.

“Nah. She keeps on telling me to live my life.” A beat. “When she was alive, at least.”

The crowd starts thinning, but a few people stay for the last song.

Natasha returns his gaze. “So?” 

“So.”

She opens her mouth to tell him he is being unbelievable, but that easy sing-song of his laughter comes out, disarms her once more and she is entranced.

He puts down his glass behind him and offers his hand out to her.

"Nat, will you have this last dance with me?"

She gracefully accepts, being a dancer and all. “Took you how many years?”

“More than a hundred. Who’s counting?”

 

Steve wastes no time in pulling her close, and the familiar comfort of his arms around her lulls her senses. 

_Listen closer, darling, hear a little harder now._

She holds him tighter, thinking of the years that has passed. _Now_ she’s counting. She never believed in fate, but what were the odds they would find each other in this time?

Natasha finds herself thanking the fates anyway. She closes her eyes briefly, trying to drown the fear of tomorrow, of the war looming over them. Tony is back. Their friends are here. It _almost_ feels like home.

As if on cue, she catches Tony’s eyes across the room, a mock disbelief in his face. 

 _“I knew it. Traitor.”_ He mouths all good-naturedly.

Ribbing she can take. It does feel like home. Natasha only rolls her eyes.

Steve feels her shift against him, and she moves as he does, resting her head against his chest. He kisses her hair.

 “ _YA ne mogu poteryat' tebya._ ” 

He only holds her closer, closer than she can possibly imagine and more. 

 

_This song is gonna last a lifetime_

_this song is gonna last forever,_

_so may I have this dance._

* * *

She rests her hand in the tombstone.

She remembers - Natasha closes her eyes - _God_ , she remembers dancing and how this loss has been scary for her to bear.

Yet here she is.

The war is over, and they had found a way to bring back what was lost. Sam, Bucky, Wanda, T’challa. Everyone.

Except him.

She finds herself tiptoeing on words, and if she is not careful enough - Natasha heaves a sigh. What more can she say?

She looks up into the sky and she will always miss him. _This song, is going to last forever._

And then she let the tears fall.

 _For all the first times. The calls. The promises. The cramped nights, running away, fighting back. That night in Wakanda. The last dance._  

She looks up to the sky one more time. But after, Natasha does not allow herself a few more minutes. She gets up, and she has to keep on living.

 

“James?”

A little boy comes back running to her at the sound of his name. She stares into very familiar eyes, blue as sharp as the sky. She holds out her hand, of scars and battles and loss. All she has to offer, for his own little hand to hold.

 

It may be another loss, but the widow always wins.

* * *

**end.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading.
> 
> For more feelings, I plug the songs that inspired this fic:  
> 1) Saturn - Sleeping at Last (someone hold me)  
> 2) Don't Wait (Acoustic Version) - Mapei  
> 3) Dance - Daniel Couper (this is the song from the last dance)
> 
> Steve's vow is from a movie. Props to anyone who recognized the line, I know - it was unoriginal but it was fitting. Hope that didn't change anything.
> 
> I especially dedicate this story to my other friends from the fandom as well - Mal, Flor, Ally - if you all happen to read this. Let's all cry together next year.
> 
> Really, I love this pair with all my heart - so much so that it got me back to writing after focusing mostly on BB8 (lol). Pardon for any OOCs, and mistakes as this is heavily unbeta'ed (I went with my feels) and for yeah. Hmm. That.
> 
> ETA: I now woke up from my haze of sleep and cringed at all the grammar horrors. Tried to fix them as much as I can. Also, I only relied on google translate for Natasha's Russian, so I hope the sentiment was not lost. Thank you again for reading if you even bothered to get this far.


End file.
